


We are living together on the earth

by ancientreader



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Knifeplay, M/M, Painplay, Poetry, sacred themes I suppose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:33:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27135970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/pseuds/ancientreader
Summary: Written for the following prompt at the kinkmeme:"They both love it when Joe traces art into Nicky's skin with a knife. He signs his name, too, marking Nicky as his, if only for a brief moment.The skin heals quickly, of course, but that just means they can do it again some other time."I diverged somewhat from the letter of the prompt, but I hope I kept its spirit.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 50
Kudos: 108





	We are living together on the earth

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beloved spouse, who reads everything I write, over and over, at various stages, and who listens to me rant about snags and stumbling blocks even when she's too tired to do more than make encouraging noises; to [TSylvestris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TSylvestris/pseuds/TSylvestris), also for multiple readings and constant enthusiasm and encouragement; and to [Sixthlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight), who generously and helpfully read the portion of this set in Alexandria and brought to my attention the religious bar that gives Yusuf so much stress for so long. You thus, I hope, enabled me to make the sex scenes hotter.
> 
> There's a glossary of the Arabic, Tamazight, Zeneize, and Italian in the endnote.

Goussainville was a shambles, not only in the figurative sense, and though Merrick’s people had cleared the bodies out the place stank of dead men’s blood and shit. Inside the house, where only Booker, Nicky, and Joe had died, the air was better. 

Nobody was eager to go back, but though they all traveled light there were some small things they liked to keep about them and that they hadn’t trusted Copley to retrieve. Talismans. 

The sheathed knife in its case was where Joe had hidden it, under the slate floor in the room where he and Nicky slept. 

Nicky’s earrings? A relieved “Ah!” told him those were safe as well. Nicky’s earrings: tiny gold hoops that Joe had bought him, that Yusuf had bought Nicolò, half their millennium ago . . . where? A close look at the workmanship would have reminded him, but Nicky had forbidden that. The earrings were his sorcery, brought out for special occasions and jealously guarded in times between. “Those would make you look dangerous,” Yusuf had said — yes, they were in the covered market of Byzantium, as she was then — and Nicolò had eyed him sidelong. “ _Look_ dangerous?” 

But Nicolò understood perfectly: he accepted the earrings, smiling his secret happy smile, and when he bent over Yusuf that night, his earrings and his eyes glinting in the moonlight, Yusuf said, “You have taken even my soul.”

Nicolò took hold of a hank of Yusuf’s hair and twisted it. “Am I a demon, then?”

“A thief,” Yusuf replied, touching one earring, the other, Nicolò’s soft mouth, “a midnight thief who steals with kisses and with whom my soul is in safe keeping.”

. . . The knife, Joe had acquired much earlier, in Alexandria, less than a century after they had made a wary exhausted truce; but a truce was one thing, the beginnings of trust another, the early green shoots of affection yet a third. They had been lying together for years by then: because they were lonely, because they found each other pleasing to the eye, because even as they grew old their bodies stayed young and the desire they felt refused the jesses they still believed they ought to put on it.

On that day, though. On that day, Yusuf had been mulling over a snippet of conversation overheard. Nicolò favored a particular fruit seller, “even though he talks so much I should leave my head with him to listen while I buy the rest of our food,” for his dates and oranges. “The dates are for you, the oranges for me,” Nicolò told Yusuf, “and the gossip is for both of us,” which was true, because by gossiping they had found ways to earn money or avoid trouble any number of times so far in their long lives, and could expect to do more of the same in future. 

So Yusuf would often pass the fruit stall on his way to the barbershop where he had gotten a reputation for the perfect smoothness of any cheek he shaved, and on this morning in question, as he drew near, he overheard the stallholder say, inquisitive: “It’s not so usual to see a Christian and a Muslim on such close terms,” and Nicolò had replied: “But I am not a Christian.”

He had said it almost casually, like a settled matter that no longer needed thought behind it. _My name is Nicolò. The cooking oil is better at this shop. I am not a Christian._

“Good morning, Abbas. I’ll see you later, Nicolò,” Yusuf had said, not pausing as he usually did. Nicolò would know he’d been overheard, but that couldn’t be helped: Yusuf had been too astonished to cover. He thought of himself as a Muslim still, though decades had passed since he had even tried to pray. He couldn’t imagine what Nicolò meant. _I am not a Christian. I am not Genoese. I neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep._

 _I rise from the dead every time I am killed_ : that was something both of them could say.

*  
Sometimes, years later and despite his falling away from belief, Yusuf liked to imagine it was a gift from Allah that, preoccupied with what he had just heard, he turned left instead of right at the Street of the Cloth-Sellers, so that instead of going at once to the barbershop he found himself passing the row of knife-sellers near the part of the harbor where the ships from Byzantium docked. He and Nicolò didn’t frequent the knife-sellers, or the sword-makers: they had all the weapons they needed. But as Yusuf realized his wrong turn, shaking his head at himself, the knife — _the_ knife — caught his eye.

*  
“Oh,” Nicolò said that afternoon, coming in from his work and seeing Yusuf’s purchase on their table, “that’s a pretty piece of craftsmanship. May I?”

Yusuf nodded. He had been thinking about the knife all day, restlessly; now he watched Nicolò’s hands turning it over, and had to swallow. The spit had pooled in his mouth, the way it did when he wanted to wet Nicolò’s prick. 

Nicolò traced the green-and-blue-and-black enamelwork on the grip. “The blade is good steel, and I’m impressed by how well it balances. But what’s it for?” He didn’t have to point out to Yusuf that no one they knew would use so beautifully ornamented an object in battle. “For eating?” Nicolò shrugged at his own question. “No, we’re not nearly grand enough, and anyway . . .” No need to finish that sentence: . . . _anyway, it’s not an eating knife, not with that wicked double edge._

“Perhaps you just found it beautiful?” Nicolò raised his eyes from the little knife and studied Yusuf. 

It was Yusuf whose desire for all kinds of beauty guided many of their purchases now: over the decades their skills had made them prosperous, and he could, if he liked, buy for them the most fragrant orange-pink apricots, the softest and most brilliantly dyed of a dozen blankets; if he liked, he could buy a seemingly useless yet perfect knife. So there was nothing of reproach in Nicolò’s scrutiny — it was only thoughtful — and he wasn’t even readying himself to speak; he was just waiting, patient, for Yusuf to tell him more about the knife, if Yusuf so chose. But in a moment, if Yusuf kept silence, he would get up and bring to the table their stoppered bottle of olive oil, the wine, the bread, a wedge of cheese, and the dates and oranges from Abbas, and if Yusuf took the opportunity to put the knife away, then Nicolò would hold his peace.

“This morning,” Yusuf heard himself say, “when you told Abbas that you’re not a Christian . . .” But he wasn’t sure where to take this question.

“Ah, you did overhear! I thought so. I meant— I wasn’t sure, myself, what I meant. But you’re right” — as if Yusuf had put forth a suggestion — “it’s not only that I don’t believe.” He had been turning the knife over and over; now, almost absently, he set the blade’s tip against the pad of his thumb and drew it down to the base, leaving a delicate line of blood behind it. “Wicked little thing,” he said to the knife, fondly, and looked up to catch Yusuf’s eye. 

So Yusuf was caught.

Nicolò, watching him, licked the blood off his thumb. “It’s healed already.”

“Yes.” This was all Yusuf could manage to say.

He didn’t remember when he had first begun to find Nicolò’s face beautiful; in fact, Nicolò’s face wasn’t beautiful, it was a collection of parts that had nothing to do with one another; his nose was too big, his mouth was wide and straight, when he wasn’t smiling or talking the whole effect was of plainness — but his eyes: his eyes were like depthless water and once Yusuf had looked into them he had fallen, fallen, fallen. Nicolò’s face kept its secrets, then suddenly threw itself open, like a gate opening onto a courtyard of flowers.

Then even the stillness of Nicolò’s face had become beautiful; where Yusuf had once found plainness he now recognized the patient attention that had, this moment, been turned on him. He had seen it in battle, too, when it warned of his particular ferocity, and in their bed, when it had begun to seem like devotion.

Nicolò said, “A Christian is a member of Christendom, isn’t he? But I don’t want to belong to Christendom. I want to belong to you.” His gaze hadn’t left Yusuf’s face since the cut began to bleed; now he reached across the table to place the knife in Yusuf’s hand and fold Yusuf’s fingers around the haft. Then he extended the other hand, palm up.

Yusuf drew in breath so hard he felt his nostrils close. _Thrumthrumthrum_ the pulse in his throat, as if his heart was a qānūn and Nicolò had run his finger along all the strings at once. 

*  
The first time it happened, that they made each other drunk on long kissing, until the delicate flesh of their lips broke open and they tasted blood — 

Yusuf had recoiled from Nicolò’s mouth. To drink blood was _haram._ But he wasn’t drinking, he was — it was only — and the taste had already vanished. It might have been his own blood, caught on his own teeth as it might have been if an enemy struck his face in battle. 

“Yusuf?” Nicolò had been frowning, doubtful. Merciful Allah, on Nicolò’s lower lip, a split and a smear — such a tiny smear — of red, and Yusuf had stared at it, aghast: because he was going up like kindling; he saw Nicolò’s lip dabbed with blood that he, Yusuf, had drawn from him and it made him want to push Nicolò down hard and shove his thighs apart and run a line of bites from the side of his neck and down his belly . . . Then Nicolò had licked his lip clean, but the madness remained. Yusuf wanted to see his blood again. To taste it again. To bring it out again. 

Instead he pressed Nicolò back gently, bent over him, sucked him, kissed his cheek, and told him a lie. “No, no, I don’t need anything right now. Next time.” 

Nicolò had let the lie stand, but even in their first years together Yusuf was learning what it felt like to be the object of a sniper’s scrutiny. 

It was terrifying. It didn’t stop. 

One night Yusuf, trying to keep silent with Nicolò spread like a starfish beneath him and pushing up as if he could draw more of Yusuf inside, had bitten down on Nicolò’s shoulder so hard the skin parted between his teeth. He could not have missed how Nicolò gasped hoarsely at this, how swiftly he came. He could not stop pressing his mouth against the healing bite. _Mine, mine, mine,_ he thought, with Nicolò’s blood on his lips.

“I want it,” Nicolò said afterward, “you must know that.” He was blushing, but his eyes were steady on Yusuf’s face. “I see you, Yusuf. You also want it. Take it, then. Don’t you know I could stop you with a word? I know that, even if you don’t.”

Yusuf thought, for the dozenth or twentieth time, _It is haram._ And yet. He wasn’t praying much anymore by then. The world was so huge and so old, and yet it changed constantly; what made one of the White Sea’s waves more precious than another? What made one faith truer than another? _It’s haram,_ he thought. _And?_

Still, he shivered.

So although fifty years had gone by since then, and although Yusuf’s heart, when he lay with Nicolò, blazed up like a bonfire — still, when he drew Nicolò’s blood he told himself he was doing it accidentally. Even though Nicolò arched his back and urged him on. Even though Yusuf knew he himself was asserting something every time.

He’d never bought a knife for the purpose before.

*  
They had closed their shutters against the Alexandrian day’s hot light. The knife lay shadowed in Yusuf’s hand. “You’re not asking me to kill you,” he said, testing.

“No, beloved. And certainly not with that. How slow you would be.”

 _Beloved._ This was not a word they had used with each other before. Not this or any of its variations in any of their languages. _Ya amar. Carus. Mon amor. Tayri._

If Yusuf did what he wanted, what Nicolò wanted, things would be different between them. Nicolò had already tipped the balance over: _beloved._

_Hemlaghk._

_Te véuggio bén._

“Standing up,” Yusuf said. So as not to get blood on their pallet, Nicolò would understand.

Nicolò rose and, watching Yusuf, smiling — he looked happy, Yusuf saw, not only full of desire but happy — drew off his tahaykt, folded it, and laid it on the pallet. His everyday qamīs was the palest green, a tint so subtle that in bright sunlight the eye registered it only as the absence of glare. Apt, Yusuf had thought when he saw the length of fine cotton for sale; apt, he had thought as he stitched the garment. It struck him, as he watched Nicolò bare himself, pulling the qamīs over his head, that Nicolò had been dressing like a Tamazigh man for many years now. Modeling himself on Yusuf.

Nicolò paused: he must have spotted Yusuf thinking. “No, go on,” Yusuf said; “I was only admiring the color of your qamīs.”

“Perhaps I should put it back on, then.”

“Perhaps you should not. Nicolò, why do we want this?”

Nicolò said, plainly, “I want your mark on me.”

“As a punishment?” 

“As a sign of holy union between us. I suppose I am that much of a believer still. And because when you draw my blood it sharpens my desire. Is that why you want it, to punish me?”

At their beginning, of course Yusuf had wanted to punish Nicolò — he had wanted it even after they stopped killing each other, even after he was sick of the smell of Nicolò’s split guts, even after he first gasped with relief on hearing the gasp of Nicolò’s returning life. But how long could you go on punishing someone who with each day demonstrated his repentance? Nicolò did whatever good he found before him to do, and after all he had committed only his own crimes: he was not a pope, nor a king, nor an army. The crimes other men committed belonged to them alone.

“No,” Yusuf said, “of course not.” Nicolò was right: when there was blood, when they drew blood from each other without harm, the blood was a holy offering, a sacrifice for which no one suffered. The pain exalted Nicolò and made Yusuf feel as though he had opened his beloved’s wings.

His beloved. Yusuf got up, tucking the tiny knife into his belt, and took Nicolò into his arms. They fell together against the wall of their room; he grasped Nicolò’s hip with one hand, and with the other pinioned Nicolò’s wrists — Nicolò had crossed them above his head — “Ah, Yusuf,” Nicolò said, “kiss my mouth, kiss my neck, I’m in a fever — ”

Yusuf sank to his knees, kissing Nicolò’s pale bared skin all the way as he went, drawing down the white sirwāl and running his hands along Nicolò’s strong thighs, saying he knew not what between kisses: _my heart, my bright lantern, do you know sometimes you shine so brilliantly I cannot look at you, how shall my eyes receive your beauty, let me press my mouth to your cock . . ._

_“Te prêgo,_ Yusuf, _te prêgo!”_

Ah, reduced to begging in Zeneize: Nicolò was close to finishing, then, and Yusuf knew him well enough to know he didn’t want to finish, liked to tighten the rope of pleasure until he could bear the strain no longer.

Anyway, Yusuf didn’t want Nicolò to come yet, either, not while there remained a ceremony to complete. He drew off Nicolò’s cock, careful not to add any pressure that would send him over, and stood to kiss him again. Nicolò’s mouth was fervent under his; Nicolò bit at Yusuf’s lips, clutched at his hair with both hands, finally broke off, panting, to say, “Tell me. You’ve been thinking about it since this morning, I know you have. How you’ll inscribe yourself on my flesh as you’ve inscribed yourself on my spirit.”

Yusuf took the knife out of his belt and laid it flat against the bone at the center of Nicolò’s chest. Nicolò didn’t even glance down, only watched Yusuf’s eyes. He had relaxed, leaning against the wall; his breath still came short, his prick was still hard and shining, but he wasn’t striving now. He had given himself over to whatever Yusuf chose to do.

“My life without you would be only a long death,” Yusuf said, and Nicolò’s expression grew tenderer yet. He took hold of Yusuf’s hand, the hand that held the knife, and brought it to his lips, then touched his mouth to the knife’s blade as well. Yusuf was still dressed, but Nicolo bent and kissed his nipples through the cloth, then slid a hand into Yusuf’s sirwāl and cupped it lightly around his cock. He leaned back against the wall again and rested there. 

Yusuf took a deep breath. “There’s a poem,” he said, raising Nicolò’s left arm to the horizontal and pinning it to the wall; then he kissed the knife’s blade and began. 

Nicolò’s eyes were like moonstones. Blood welled in a fine thread from the poem’s opening words as Yusuf drew them. 

He had chosen naskh script, for its clarity and simplicity, and because it was the form he had most practice with, but still it was finicky, tricky, to use a blade rather than a pen. He had to wait for Nicolò to heal so he could redo the first couple of words. 

Once he had the knack, the drawing went only as slowly as he, and Nicolò, wanted it to. Soon they were breathing in time with each other, deep and steady, and Yusuf found he had completed the first line. Had hours passed? He dragged his mouth along the part in Nicolò’s skin and felt it healing under his touch: no more than minutes, then. He licked his lips.

“It’s not one of mine, and not one from my people; but, my love, whenever I remember it I think of you. It’s by Abū Nūwas.” He kissed Nicolò’s hand and replaced that arm by his side, then reached down and stroked Nicolò’s cock, once, twice, as lightly as he could, and ran a finger around the head, already wet. Nicolò made a tiny voiceless “Ah!” and closed his eyes. 

“Now your right arm, beautiful one. I won’t write the whole poem — it’s far too long — only three lines from it. When I’ve finished I’ll recite them for you.” Yusuf kissed Nicolò’s parted lips, his arched neck, nipped at his collarbones; he ran his free hand along Nicolò’s flank, and the skin shivered under his touch. _“Te véuggio bén,”_ he said, smiling at the look of surprise the Zeneize got him; but _“Ya nour el ein,”_ Nicolò whispered, “Light of my eyes.” 

So it was not only Yusuf whose head had been full of endearments in the tongues belonging to the other. He drew his knife along Nicolò’s outstretched right arm, writing from the shoulder joint down to the elbow, left to right, then gathered up the blood on his fingers and fed them into Nicolò’s mouth to be licked clean. “Later,” Yusuf told him, “I’ll give you my cock, yes?” and laughed when Nicolò bit down. “Open your legs now.” He stroked the insides of Nicolò’s thighs and the space behind his balls, pulled up so tight Yusuf didn’t even have to move them out of the way.

Nicolò thrashed. “Yusuf! Not yet, _te prêgo.”_

“I know, I know,” Yusuf reassured him. “There’s one more line to write. Then I’ll recite them for you, and we’ll see.”

Nicolò flung his head back against the wall, inviting Yusuf to cover his neck with one hand while he carefully, delicately laid his skin open with the other. Nicolò was hissing now at every bite of the blade, as each cut aroused him more and he found it harder and harder to hold himself back. “No,” he was saying, “no, no, no,” pleading with himself not to come.

Yusuf paused, so as to help him. 

“I want only to be yours. _I choose you,_ do you understand?” Nicolò was speaking between gasps, catching his breath; he sounded furious. “My allegiance, my faith, they are for you alone.” 

“I know,” Yusuf told him, gently, “I know. There is no one for me but you, I will claim you against all the world,” and he pressed Nicolò’s neck back, feeling the steady fast pulse in the heel of his hand, to write in blood the poem’s last few words.

When Yusuf stepped back to strip out of his own qamīs and sirwāl, Nicolò opened his eyes to watch but stayed where he was, leaning against the wall, until Yusuf swept forward to pin his wrists above his head and press a thigh between his legs. The pressure was enough: Nicolò cried out into Yusuf’s mouth and went limp, almost fainting. All along their chests and bellies the skin was sticky-wet, with blood and come. Yusuf kissed Nicolò’s ear. “Are you ready to hear the poem now?” 

Nicolò’s eyes had fallen shut, and Yusuf thought he would not have been able to stand without the support of Yusuf’s thigh and torso, but he turned his head to kiss Yusuf’s cheek. “Tell me,” he said. 

After all that — and why? — Yusuf found himself abashed, so much that he had to whisper.

“‘Our arrows have become lilies,’” he recited, softly, “‘our swords stems of green basil; our war is transformed into love.’” 

*  
They stood embracing, kissing each other’s mouths, necks, shoulders, trading endearments, until standing became uncomfortable; then Yusuf led Nicolò to their pallet and wetted a cloth to clean them both. Nicolò watched him, quietly, lifted a hand to run it up and down Yusuf’s arm, hummed with pleasure at the cool water on his skin. Yusuf’s cock was mostly soft, all his attention focused on his task, but when he was done he saw that Nicolò’s gaze had gone avid while he worked; this had an immediate effect.

Nicolò laughed and looped two fingers around the head of Yusuf’s prick to tug at it, as if his hand was a leash. Yusuf supposed it was: he followed the pressure of Nicolò’s hand and found himself guided into lying down beside Nicolò, who promptly straddled him. “That was just what I wanted,” Nicolò said. “Do you think Abū Nūwas has a poem for every occasion? For example, a poem describing the pleasure a lover feels in the gasps of his beloved when his nipples are teased?” He plucked at Yusuf’s nipples and pressed himself against Yusuf’s cock — hard again by now. With his hips, Nicolò drew the pressure out in a circle. Around and around, slowly. Whenever Yusuf’s hips began to rock in their turn, “Keep still,” Nicolò ordered, tender, implacable.

The frustration began to emerge from Yusuf as sound. Voiced gasps. Curses. Once, a long, pleading ululation. He more or less knew that he had produced it, but it seemed to come from a great distance. He wanted to watch Nicolò move, to see the careful concentration on his face and the flush traveling in all directions along his pale freckled skin, but the pleasure Nicolò gave him was too deep, too sharp, and his eyes kept closing. When he was very, very close to coming, Nicolò slipped off him: _“Ya hamaar!”_ he yelped, outraged.

Nicolò snorted. “I may be a donkey, but you promised me your prick.” He situated himself at right angles to Yusuf and, kneeling over him, kissed his way down Yusuf’s body, squeezing the base of his cock between finger and thumb, dabbing at the slit with the tip of his tongue until Yusuf’s cursing and begging were indistinguishable even to Yusuf, and then, finally, blessedly, brought his mouth down on it and pressed it with his tongue and opened the ring he had made of his fingers and finally, blessedly, _alhamdulillah,_ let Yusuf come.

*

Yusuf cleaned the knife with special care, kept the blade sharp enough that to be cut with it felt, for a long moment, as though nothing had happened, the flesh parted that smoothly under it. Sometimes, in the centuries after Alexandria, he brought it out simply for the sake of the pleasure it brought Nicolò, and thus also to himself; sometimes, though, the pleasure mixed with something weightier, he was marking Nicolò with the knife because both of them needed the ceremony, the resanctification of their union, which, Nicolò had known from the first day, the drawing of blood without doing harm could memorialize for them.

On the way out of Goussainville, Nile driving the car, Andy lounging in the passenger seat, Joe opened his rucksack and tilted his head, Look. The knife case was tucked into the side but plainly visible.

Nicky sighed out a breath at the sight of it and his body went loose against Joe’s. He nodded minutely, for Joe’s information only. Joe kissed his temple and closed up the rucksack again.

*

“When he shot you through your mouth,” Joe said, “how is it that that has never happened before? Your brain, and the back of your head … I was more afraid for you than I have ever been.”

“I also. In that moment just before he pulled the trigger. I had enough time to be filled with despair at the thought that this was too much, that I might not come back to you.” Nicky set his palm against Joe’s cheek, a reassurance.

All the way from London to Goussainville and from Goussainville back to the London safehouse, Joe had seemed steady; and then the dread and the pain had caught up with him. The morning after they exiled Booker, he had followed Nicky into the shower and combed obsessively through his hair, as if even days after their escape he might still find residue of brain and bone. Nicky, watching him over their breakfast later, said, “You showed me the knife, on our way out of France. Is it not time to use it?” 

Joe shook his head. He, who always seemed flung open to the world, was looking down at the table, not at Nicky, and he was hunched in on himself. “My hands aren’t steady.”

“I’m sure the work will steady them,” Nicky told him after a moment of thought, and got up to fetch Joe’s rucksack.

Now they were lying on their sides in bed, the safehouse quiet around them, passing their words to each other softly though neither Andromache nor Nile was home to overhear. Nicky felt possibility float upward, making a canopy over them. He ran a hand up Joe’s arm, cupped his face, laid two fingers against his mouth to be kissed. “I’m yours,” he said. “I’ve been yours for all but the most inconsequential fraction of my life. What was it like not to belong to you?”

The knife lay on the table beside the bed; all Joe had to do was get up on one elbow and reach for it. Nicky imagined it longingly, how he would go pliant under Joe’s mouth, his teeth, his hands, the blade. But Joe’s hands and mouth were tentative, almost fearful, as though, preposterously, he was afraid of hurting Nicky; he wasn’t going to be able to start, not without a push, and never mind how much he needed to demonstrate to himself that Nicky belonged to him and not to that murderer.

Nicky could no longer remember how it felt to have Joe’s pain trouble him less than his own. The sick dread of that moment with the gun in his mouth still echoed through him — the heat of the barrel, the scorched reek, the almost sexual hatred on Keane’s face — but he had awakened, he had fought: those things had relieved the worst of the horror. 

Joe had seen what Nicky had not, the ruin of Nicky’s head. 

Investigation revealed that Joe wasn’t even all the way hard. “Oh, _anima mia,_ ” Nicky said, taking hold of Joe’s cock and tapping at the slit with his thumb. “I’ll place a bet that you even know what you want to write on me, yes?”

Joe had tucked his head into Nicky’s shoulder; now he raised it and let his eyes widen — a little exaggeratedly: good; it was as much as Nicky had seen of Joe’s humor since the lab. And his cock was firming, the head wetly slick. “I didn’t, not until just this moment. How did you do that?” 

“I’m psychic, obviously.” Ostentatiously, Nicky brought his fingers, shiny with precome, to his mouth and cleaned them off.

“Psychic,” Joe scoffed. 

His voice had cracked in the middle of the word; pleased, Nicky went back to playing with Joe’s cock, teasingly, touches that would get annoying if they didn’t lead anywhere. He tightened his thumb and forefinger, once, for less than a second, behind the head. He stroked the top of the head, slowly: once, twice, three times. He reached back farther to cup Joe’s balls. 

Then he took his hand away and folded his arms behind his head. “Well?”

Joe swore under his breath, something about stinking camels; Nicky aimed a smug expression at him for it, because he knew he was getting Joe where he wanted him when Joe’s imprecations reverted to the idioms he had learned nine centuries ago. Joe grabbed his head — not anxiously, not anxiously, _Deo gratia_ — and kissed him, lifted up to take the knife off the nightstand, and in the same movement swung himself up and over to kneel astride Nicky’s hips. 

“Aha,” said Nicky. He could feel his heart picking up speed. “Please, Yusuf. Remind us both that I am yours.”

Joe bent to rest against Nicky, keeping the pretty knife well aside: never once in eight centuries had he cut Nicky carelessly. His ear was pressed to Nicky’s heartbeat, running quick and strong. Nicky rocked Joe on the waves of his breath: in, the wave raising him; out, the wave lowering him into its soft hollow. Up, down; up; down. _Me for your cradle,_ Nicky thought. He trailed a hand through Joe’s hair and whispered, _“As-salāmu ʿalaykum.”_ A greeting, a blessing.

 _“Wa ʿalaykumu s-salām,”_ Joe whispered back, and now it was all right: now Nicky could feel peace settling down on them. Finally, finally. 

Joe sat up, put the flat of the knife blade to Nicky’s lips so he could bless that too; then he also kissed the blade, and began.

When they used the knife only for its exquisite pleasure, Joe’s breath would catch, over and over; he bit his lip, broke off his work to kiss Nicky’s mouth or bite at the delicate skin on the undersides of his arms. If he was sitting astride Nicky, he would pause from time to time to take a grip of their cocks and wet them together, with their precome, or his spit, or lube. Sometimes he brought a dish of olive oil to the bed and used that: its fragrance and its peppery sting a reminder of how old their bond was, sustained like a deep note of music, constantly renewed. 

Today he was grave. 

He sent the knife in a long swoop around and over Nicky’s left breast, making much of his first letter, a large initial such as a monastery copyist would have used. This, the first cut, gave the purest pain, even when Nicky was far gone in arousal beforehand. He had been delighted, a decade or two ago, to learn why; he’d gone around saying the word _endorphins_ to himself, and laughing. He breathed out when Joe’s knife moved, breathed in when it paused. Long, slow breaths, so that Joe’s work would never be thrown off its course. He kept his right hand locked around his left wrist, above his head. If he could discover every possible means of telling Joe _I am yours. Everything between us is holy. I know that you will never harm me,_ he would use all of them. 

Joe kissed away the blood from each word as he drew it. He paused often to kiss Nicky’s mouth, to fuss with his teeth at Nicky’s nipples or at the join of his arm. From time to time he used his free hand to stroke Nicky’s cock, and all his caresses and kisses were making the pain sweet now. He was working left to right, Nicky registered distantly, beginning to drift, so whatever he had chosen to mark Nicky with was in Italian, English, or French, probably . . . Nicky lost himself to the movements of Joe’s knife, his hand, his mouth; he was so hard, he wanted to come, but it would wait; he wanted to wait, to leave all of his pleasure in Joe’s keeping — _ah, there, there,_ Joe’s hand was on him, wet and knowing — _ah!_

Joe gasped, a hoarse sound, and Nicky came back, fast, from the place where he had been floating among clouds. “Yusuf!” He raised his hands to Joe’s face. “My own, _perdonami,_ how could I have failed to notice your tears?”

Joe turned his face to kiss Nicky’s palm. “I thought I was keeping your attention fixed elsewhere! And, look, I’m not crying anymore, it’s only that I was holding my breath for the last word or two, I don’t even know why. And then suddenly I needed a breath very badly.”

Nicky glanced down Joe’s body. “Yes, I see that you’re full of good cheer. Come up here, let me drink you down.” He shifted to sit against the headboard and drew Joe closer.

“Wait, wait!” Joe leaned away to put the knife back on the nightstand. “You’re so patient when I write poems into you, and then so impatient.”

Nicky shrugged. “Of course I am impatient after all that patience. Now come here, put your cock to my mouth.”

This always gave Nicky great pleasure — sucking Joe, and sucking him like this, specifically, with Joe kneeling before him; he clasped Joe’s hips and brought him in deep, deeper, as deep as he could, pressing up with his tongue and reaching farther back with one hand to stroke his hole until Joe surrendered, wordless, clutching at Nicky’s hair, and came.

And Joe was crying again, easily, not struggling against the tears. Nicky soothed him with endearments, pressed him to his heart, stroked his hair, his ear, the crest of his shoulder, and let him weep till he was done. 

“Nicky, Nico, Nicolò.” Joe swept a hand over his face and came to rest again. “I was so afraid, _ya amar._ ”

“I’m here. We have nothing to be afraid of now.”

“For a while, at least.”

“For a while,” Nicky agreed. They were both silent for a space. “Will you tell me now what you wrote?”

“Oh, it’s from such a simple poem, about a life made together. The poem ends like this: ‘The last door to the last room / comes unlatched. Here are the gestures / of my hands. Wear them in your hair.’”

Nicky was quiet for a few moments, turning the words over, kissing Joe. “You have known for many years, I hope, that all my rooms are open to you.” 

Their doors, he thought, had been open to each other since —

“Alexandria,” Joe said.

**Author's Note:**

> The lines Yusuf cuts into Nicolò in the first scene are based on a real poem by Abū Nūwas, _“Harbun ta‘ūdu unsan,”_ or “War Becoming Friendship.” I took liberties with the translation I cribbed from, but the sense is accurate. The translation appears in As'ad E. Khairallah, “‘The Wine-Cup of Death’: War as a Mystical Way,” _Quaderni di Studi Arabi,_ vol. 8 (1990), pp. 171–190.
> 
> The second poem is "[Year Day](http://victoriajanssen.com/2011/02/jane-kenyon-year-day/)," by Jane Kenyon. Joe chooses the closing lines; I took the title of this story from the first line. 
> 
> I couldn’t find a source for the Zeneize / Ligurian that Nicolò would have been speaking back in the day, nor for Tamazight or Arabic as Yusuf would have known them. I’ve done my best to identify reliable sources for the modern phrases in the story, but I don’t speak any of the relevant languages and expert input is welcome. That having been said, here's the promised glossary:
> 
> qānūn: [a stringed instrument](http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/zCm0Rn9fQH2yA7rnTAxOaA) that looks rather like a zither
> 
>  _haram:_ forbidden, in Islamic law
> 
>  _ya amar:_ like the moon — i.e., the speaker finds the person beautiful
> 
>  _carus, mon amor, tayri:_ dear (Latin), my love (Zeneize), love (Tamazight)
> 
>  _hemlaghk; te véuggio bén:_ I love you, in Tamazight and Zeneize/Ligurian respectively
> 
> tahaykt: [an outer garment](https://wiki.amtgard.com/index.php/Category:Maghribi_Garb), like a wrap
> 
> qamīs: tunic, and please do notice that this is a cognate for chemise, which got me unreasonably excited
> 
> sirwāl: [underdrawers](https://fashion-history.lovetoknow.com/clothing-around-world/middle-east-history-islamic-dress), or long baggy trousers, depending on whom you ask
> 
> (Note: I did my best with the clothes, and they’re probably reasonably accurate, but God only knows where I got the diacriticals, because I can’t find my sources for those. If someone knowledgeable happens to see this and feels like pointing me to something authoritative, I’d be grateful.)
> 
>  _te prêgo:_ please, though that’s probably obvious from context! (Zeneize)
> 
> naskh script: Arabic can be written in many different scripts, from simple and practical to highly ornamented. As far as I could learn, naskh would have commonly been used for commercial transactions around the time Yusuf was learning his family’s business.
> 
>  _ya nour el ein:_ light of my eyes, but Nicolò translates it immediately so you knew that
> 
>  _ya hamaar:_ [son of a donkey](https://arabic.desert-sky.net/coll_insult.html)
> 
>  _alhamdulillah:_ praise be to Allah
> 
>  _anima mia:_ my soul (Italian)
> 
>  _Deo gratia:_ thank God (Latin)
> 
>  _as-salāmu ʿalaykum_ and _wa ʿalaykumu s-salām:_ the standard exchange of greetings in Arabic; “peace be upon you,” in both cases.
> 
>  _perdonami:_ forgive me (Italian)


End file.
